


The Beginning

by kitschimage



Series: Genesis [1]
Category: Ghost (Sweden Band)
Genre: A Lot Of This Is Just Me Venting But Hopefully Some Of It's Relatable, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Cathartic Bullshit, Existential Nonsense, Gen, Growing Up Gay And Religious, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Self-Acceptance, Wholesome Mentor / Mentee Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27255127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitschimage/pseuds/kitschimage
Summary: An origin story AU following lapsed Catholic Copia and his journey from orphaned beginnings to the top of the Emeritus Church.
Series: Genesis [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2109768
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	The Beginning

**October 3, 1981 ∙ Sweden**

The night before his departure, Copia sat perched on the cracked leather seat of his room’s only window. The breaks in the fabric were rough against his skin, but his appreciation for the view overrode any need to complain. An evening breeze tickled his nose as it chased the day’s warmth toward the horizon, leaving him to shiver off and on against the old, dirty glass. Fall was finally here, and it was getting colder by the minute. The outside world had gone silent in reply, but he didn't mind. If anything, the change in weather had created an environment ideal for peaceful stargazing.

From his spot on high, he could see damn near everything: the entirety of the church, the local village, and, most importantly, the forest that lay just beyond them. While there wasn't much he liked about life in the abbey, his little roost topped the short list of perks it had to offer — even if the improbable string of events that had led him to inhabit one of its — to put it nicely — more furnished dorms remained a mystery. Regarding the option to sit somewhere other than the rock-hard panels of an ancient, hardwood floor as a form of luxury was, admittedly, depressing at best, but unlike most other residents, Copia didn’t have to wait until morning to get a breath of fresh air.

Besides, for all its flaws, the abbey was quite serene at dusk. The moon had begun its gentle climb, and long, end-of-day shadows twisted their way across the lawn under its beam. Faint lights shone in odd intervals from the buildings that dotted the concourse, setting the stage for soon-to-be-visible stars to take their place in the vast, purple sky. With arms wrapped around knobby knees, Copia squeezed his legs tightly to his chest and stared into the distance, quietly drinking in a world that would soon exist only in memory. His eyes flicked from the dull glow of stained glass up to twinkling heavens, then back to the fading hues of low-lying clouds.

 _It's beautiful like this_ , he thought. _But only like this._

And he was right, oddly enough. Certain things are only attractive from a distance. While his church was no exception, he knew he was still going to miss it. _‘Miss it’,_ of course, barely conveyed what he was actually feeling, but to be fair: describing, with any amount of accuracy, the nostalgia that forms in the wake of departure from the familiar to the unknown isn’t something that comes easily to most twelve-year-olds. Could you feel homesick for a place that never felt like home? He wasn’t sure. The life he thus far knew offered him so little, and yet, in almost every aspect of it, he had managed to find something of just enough value to convince him to stay alive. 

The temperature concluded its drop as the last traces of sun disappeared below the treeline. Copia turned up his collar and retracted both hands further into his jacket sleeves, clenching his jaw against the waves of goosebumps blossoming over his body. The cold fucking sucked, no two ways about it, but it’d have to get a lot worse before he’d even _consider_ abandoning his favorite spot. Determined to stick it out, he reached for the threadbare quilt that decorated his equally-disheveled nook and draped it over his shoulders.

He had just begun to feel comfortable when he noticed a glare forming from the light shining beneath his door. It was finally dark enough that any added brightness from his room would completely disturb the scene outside. A frustrated sigh escaped his lips. Placing both hands against the porthole’s pane, he pushed as hard as he could, but as per usual, the structure barely moved. It gave only a low, derelict creak before locking up again, open not even halfway. The stupid thing had been broken since the day he moved in. It had been a disappointing discovery, but also one he’d grown to tolerate as he was terrified of jeopardizing his access to the features of his room by whining about their performance. He was also exhausted of his suitemates — whenever they bothered to show up — teasing him over how preoccupied he seemed with the world beyond his window, but that was another story.

Thankfully, none of that mattered now. Or at any rate, it wouldn't soon, and since he had nothing better to do than reminisce the evening away, he wriggled up from under his blanket and began to work apart the hinge with his fingers. Copia’s nails were at the constant mercy of his nerves. Between school and choir, round-the-clock secret keeping, and the general existential horror of being a person, they never had much chance to grow. Still, he managed to strip away a considerable amount of gunk on his own. The joint _looked_ better with the initial coat removed, but still caught and hung when it was asked to open. Copia frowned, then leaned over to access the cabinet space under his seat and rummaged around blindly until his hand brushed with a small toolbox. After recovering a gently-used rag and a set of pliers, he set to work freeing the pin from its knuckles. It was a slow process. Not difficult, per say, but slow, and his mind, as it often did during such idle tasks, began to wander. 

His subconscious traveled to the tangential grime in his own life: the person he couldn’t be, the standards he failed to uphold, and the ever-growing weight of his own self-hatred that clung lifelessly to his shoulders. Layers had formed. Years of walking the same, exhaustive trail had worn a rut in his soul, leaving him trapped on all sides by walls of filth. It was getting harder to breathe. Harder to think. Harder to know where the world around him stopped and he began. He was stuck, and unlike this window, there was no easy fix. Nobody was out there with a pair of boy-sized pliers, ready and willing to reach down and pluck him from his hell. None of this was news, but the realization that he could no longer bullshit himself about his current situation suddenly weighed so heavily on Copia that he feared the sheer magnitude of his guilt might pull him straight through the floor.

He swallowed hard, knuckles going white as his grip on the tool and the ledge both tripled in force. The room felt devoid of oxygen. He tried to pull his mind from the terrors at hand and instead focus on the window as it fogged with his ragged breathing, but his head continued to spin. Shoving it all down had become a losing battle. Desperate for air, he repositioned himself in front of the gap. While the coolness of the evening felt good against his sweaty face, it did little to dispel the dissent inside him, and despite his efforts to concentrate on his work, his reality continued to crumble. The pale light, the grime, the condensation: all swirling together to warp his reflection until the world was a fun house mirror from which there was no escape. Layers between him and rest of existence. Layers too thick to wipe away. There were no self-soothing lies left to tell. It wouldn't get better and it wouldn't be alright. Not here. Not like this. Gagging on his own panic, he wrenched his gaze from the hinge to the distorted, twinkling heavens and forced the truth he had been running from his entire life out of his gut and into the open.

“No one is coming to save me.”

It was barely audible, but as the syllables tumbled from his lips, he could feel the cathartic wave commence its gentle crash. With a soft _pop,_ the pin finally slipped free, dropping, along with his resolve, onto the fabric beneath his shoes. He maneuvered the glass out of its frame and brought it to rest beside him as he waited for the onslaught of emotions to pass, not wanting to wet his face and consequently shiver more than he already was.

The wind picked up again, ruffling his wavy, chestnut hair as it filtered through the vacant sill. He took a few calming breaths, feeling his pulse return to normal. It smelled so _good_ outside. The silence was empty, but comfortable, punctuated only by the gentle creaking of bare branches knocking against each other in the breeze. The stars, no longer obscured, seemed practically ablaze: each individual glint like one of many undiscovered possibilities that awaited Copia just beyond his familiar horizon. His eyes swept the scene one final time, then slid shut. As far as last days go, this one was alright. He gave a soft sigh, then cleared the sadness from his throat.

“No one is coming to save me,” he repeated in a whisper. “So I am going to save myself.”


End file.
